5 Books Scientific American Recommends for August

Flip the Web page on Summer season: August’s Important E-book Picks

By Brianne Kane edited by Andrea Gawrylewski

The canine days of summer season have been nipping at our heels this August: the humidity has been oppressive, the holidays not fairly lengthy sufficient, and the prospect of going into autumn is each comforting and dreadful. Summer season studying could also be ending quickly, however Scientific American nonetheless has compelling science books to advocate earlier than “sweater climate” units in. This August we examine regenerating human physique components and the way forward for synthetic intelligence, discovered in regards to the historical past of our planet and the photo voltaic system as interpreted by meteorites and layers of Earth and spent a while exploring the hellscape often known as graduate faculty. What are you studying to shut out the summer season? Hold a watch out for extra e-book inspiration from Scientific American later this 12 months.

Empire of AI: Desires and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI
by Karen Hao
Penguin Press, Could 2025

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Historical past is crammed with tales of the rise and fall of empires. Such political entities, ruled by a singular unelected chief, drag tens of millions of individuals alongside for the experience, typically to the good thing about solely a small ruling class (and the exploitation of the plenty). In Empire of AI, journalist Karen Hao makes a daring however easy declare: the AI firms intricately woven into our digital lives are de facto empires, and it takes eager senses to kind their highly effective leaders’ self-aggrandizing guarantees from the practical implications of the expertise. Seemingly in a single day each web site or app has developed its personal AI software, making this expertise instantly unavoidable, although additionally it is unquestionably necessary and certain misunderstood. Hao, a former AI editor for MIT Expertise Evaluation and former international correspondent with the Wall Road Journal, brings sturdy boots-on-the-ground-style journalism to this intensive e-book—with greater than 65 pages of notes and sources. It’s a rare instance of nonfiction, each superbly written and deeply researched. And it takes an uncompromising stance on the worldwide impacts of AI and the explosion of cash and energy behind the expertise. —Brianne Kane

The Meteorites: Encounters with Outer Area and Deep Time
by Helen Gordon
Profile Books, June 2025

Billion-year-old rocks crammed with tiny microbes from extraterrestrial water may very well be the important thing to our understanding of the universe and the origins of life on Earth. Whereas researching and writing her new e-book The Meteorites, author Helen Gordon traveled the world to satisfy an array of meteorite devotees: from the geologists growing a brand new discipline of examine dubbed “paleo-astronomy”—who look at meteorites which have fallen to Earth (and the microbes they carry) to find out about galactic and photo voltaic system formation and the origins of alien life—to the rock lovers who spend their days trying to find and promoting, for probably tens of millions of {dollars}, the prettiest, weirdest or “youngest” house rocks they will discover. The Meteorites just isn’t solely an ode to rock collectors but additionally to anybody intrigued by these typically terrifying objects that tumble towards Earth from historic corners of house. Seeing, or higher but holding, a meteorite is a profound expertise, Gordon writes. It could possible be the oldest factor you’d ever touched. And whereas house feels very a lot “on the market,” she says, “out there may be throughout us. Touchdown on our shoulders, falling on our roofs.” —B.Okay.

Strata: Tales from Deep Time
by Laura Poppick
W. W. Norton, July 2025

The deep historical past of Earth—over the sheer scale of billions of years, with solely the opaque names of eras and epochs to navigate by—will be overwhelming. In Strata, geologist-turned-science-journalist Laura Poppick pushes previous this display screen by highlighting 4 pivotal phenomena: air, ice, mud and warmth. Every drive fully reshaped Earth throughout a key interval of the previous—and altered life on the planet as properly, permitting totally different forms of crops and animals to thrive as circumstances shifted. All through the e-book, she exhibits what scientists learn about our planet’s deep historical past. She additionally introduces researchers who’re working within the discipline and within the lab to dig by the layers, or strata, of rock and proceed fleshing out the story they inform. She takes the reader a step additional, proper to these rocks, by sharing her personal experiences within the discipline, from dinosaur digs to Eire’s emerald-green coast. It’s an emotional, humane e-book that explores geology in a brand new approach. —Meghan Bartels

Katabasis
by R.F. Kuang
Harper Voyager, August 2025

Graduate faculty is understood for being difficult, however magic graduate faculty sucks the life proper out of you: it includes memorizing historic spells, deciding on the proper enchanted chalk for sketching a pentagram and perfecting your Latin so your spells don’t break the material of the universe. In Katabasis, novelist R.F. Kuang dives into the fictional (however oh-so-familiar) hellscape of academia. After their graduate advisor dies below mysterious magical circumstances, graduate college students of magic Alice and Peter, each decided to complete their program with honors, resolve they have to descend into Hell and resurrect their professor to allow them to defend their dissertations. Like a lot of her earlier work, Kuang excels right here along with her expansive world-building, intelligent magic techniques and forward-moving plot that retains you studying into the evening. Katabasis cautiously wades into waters not typically explored within the “magical faculty” style of fantasy novels by depicting sexism and violence enacted by lecturers on college students. Readers will get pleasure from smirking on the literary references to Greek mythology, however the coronary heart of the e-book is the reluctantly shut relationship between Alice and Peter: there’s no stronger bond than a trauma bond. —B.Okay.

Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy
by Mary Roach
W. W. Norton, September 2025

In her newest e-book, creator Mary Roach does what she does greatest: she selects a squirm-worthy topic (previous examples have included cadavers, digestion and copulation) and transforms it right into a full of life story of science and the human endeavor. In Replaceable You, Roach trains her skills on the world of organ regeneration and substitute. Alongside the best way, she reveals the fantastic thing about the human physique by highlighting how, properly, gross it’s: people are crammed with mucus, our hair typically falls out, and our joints degrade of their sockets. Impressed by “the outstanding and typically surreal adaptability—the agreeableness—of the human physique” to simply accept new organs, new tissues or fluids, Roach’s unforgettable sense of journey flies off each web page. Whether or not holding a beating human coronary heart in her hand or spending an evening in an iron lung simply to strive it out, she is fearless in her firsthand reporting. She even chitchats in regards to the particulars of surgical vulvoplasty over lunch with a surgeon, awkwardly laughing when the waiter presents their desk extra Parmesan cheese—the surgeon is ravenous and barely notices. Some organs could also be replaceable, however the endlessly endearing and interesting Mary Roach just isn’t.

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